Wednesday, 27 May 2015

Pyjama Revenge (after...oh, take a wild, leaping guess)

The part of me that hates to bake
would make my birthday cake for you
if you asked me in that tone of voice
telling me you have to:

read the recipe. And make the cake.
The part of me that flinches from
a stranger's touch would melt
like rum-soaked amaretti if your finger

flicked my side as Cynthia's strikes Evelyn.
The part of me that's seen this scene
and knows where it is going
will wish it didn't climax with

a safeword silenced by a woollen sock.
There's part of me that needs to know
if I say no, you'll stop: and part of me
that wishes you would not.

Yes, I know I did use Pyjama Revenge as the title for another poem in this sequence (and I suppose I may as well admit it is a sequence at this point); that title obviously draws its inspiration from a different scene in the film and has therefore been renamed The Flirtatious Use of Tape Measures. This poem gets the original title, being based on the relevant scene.

A couple of points need to be made here, lest any dickheads out there try to say 'but that fat trans lesbian poet said all subs secretly don't want their doms to stop' to justify their Christian Gray-esque behaviour:

1) This is not a poem about all subs - it's about two at most, one of whom is fictional - me, and Evelyn, the sub character in Strickland's film, and our differing reactions to Cynthia's behaviour in the scene leading up to the 'revenge' moment (what Evelyn finds unsettling about Cynthia in that scene, I actually really like, essentially);

2) I'm a poet, so I choose my words carefully. There's a difference between a need and a wish;

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About AJ

AJ McKenna is a spoken word artist, but hopes to provoke you to disagree with her about that. Her poetry film 'A Letter to a Minnesota Prison' (commissioned by Apples & Snakes and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation)was shown at the South Bank Centre in 2013. In 2015 she premiered her one-woman show 'Howl of the Bantee' at the PBH Free Fringe in Edinburgh. A former Deputy Editor at So So Gay magazine, she now writes for Vada and Clarissa Explains Fuck All.